The Sunday Salon... Let's Sail Away with some Great Sci-Fi!

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! Pull up a chair, grab a cup of java and relax a little. It's that time of the week to chat books! Last Sunday was a bit of a departure as Bloggiesta was going on, that time of the year where bloggers concentrate on tweaking their blogs, learn a thing or two and just have a lot of fun. I virtually met so many great bloggers that weekend and found some great new blogs. If you're new here, Sundays are the day of the week I chat about what great books I spied over the week, or caught wind of , and all sorts of other bookish things. Today, I'm feeling like sailing away! With all this SNOW, and more to come, I just need to get away! So, let's sail away together with some great Sci-Fi with a splash of Dystopia... SciFi is not my usual cup of tea. Not that I don't enjoy reading good sci-fi, it's just not what I usually reach for first. But when I do veer in thatdirection, I always wonder why I don't read more sci-fi. I found out that I love Dystopian fiction when I read The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, followed by The Maze Runner by James Dashner. Is Sci-Fi a place where you go looking for a good book? If it isn't your norm, you may want to give one of today's featured books a try. They've gotten some great buzz, especially our first book...

Across the Universe by Beth Revis. Our first trip today is going to be on the ship Godspeed... Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed. She expects to wake up on a new planet, 300 years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed's scheduled landing, Amy's cryo chamber is unplugged, and she is nearly killed. Now, Amy is caught inside an enclosed world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed's passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader, and Elder, his rebellious and brilliant teenage heir. Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she? All she knows is that she must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.

This YA novel has received so much praise already! Reviewers are loving it! It has murder, intrigue, love & friendship all rolled together with a splash of that Dystopian world I love to read about. And Beth Revis has created a believable, detailed world inside that spaceship, which should enrich the story. Another interesting thing to mention is the cover. My dust jacket was a little off kilter when I received it, and in straightening it back around the book, I noticed the inside of the dust jacket could also be used for the outside- AND that jacket is a detailed map of the ship. There is a little speculation that if this series, and it is going to be a trilogy, takes off (like the Hunger Games) that you'll see more "space based" YA novels.

Virga: Cities of the Air by Karl Schroeder... Next, let's take a trip in a fullerene Balloon! How can you resist a world existing in a floating balloon?! It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and “towns” that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for centripetal gravity. The complex and fascinating world is the setting for the novels of Virga, Karl Schroeder’s interstellar far-future space habitat sealed off from contamination by the rest of the inhabited universe.

Virga: Cities of the Air is an omnibus of the first two books in Karl Schroeders Virga novels. Those novels are Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce. What Karl Schroeder is known for his ability to create a believable complex world operating in a balloon. I won a copy of book three in this series, Pirate Sun, from Shellie at Layers of Thought and TOR Books, and am thinking of starting from the beginning with Virga: Cities of the Air first. Although it does seem that each book can be read as a stand alone, it's always nice to get to know the characters from their humble beginnings. There is a great review of Virga: Cities of the Air at Layers of Thought if you'd like to learn a little more.

Phantom Universe by Laura Krietzer... Now, a more "traditional" mode of travel- a pirate ship! Sold into slavery to pirates at the young age of four, Summer learns to survive the rough seas of subterfuge and thieves through silence. When the boat she’s lived on most of her life is destroyed, Summer finds herself washed up on the shore of a new world, a phantom universe full of the bizarre and extraordinary. She meets Gage, the one boy who understands the girl with no speech. But when their lives are put on the line, will Summer finally call out? Or will all be lost in the fathomless depth of silence?

I heard some great buzz about Phantom Universe and after reading the prologue to the book, needed to read more! The prologue finds Summer and her mother running from the powers that are looking for Summer. It really pulled at my heart, and in that brief prologue Summer really got under my skin. And from the pre-pub reviews I've read, she is quite the heroine. Laura Krietzer will be a guest here at Chick with Books in late March. And in the meantime, if you want to sail away with Summer on this pirate ship, you can pre-order Phantom Universe , either ebook format or autographed paperback, from Laura's website LauraKrietzer.com.

So, are you going to sail away this weekend? Is Sci-Fi something you read regularly? If you haven't read either The Uglies or The Maze Runner, you can find links to my reviews of them in my Dystopian Reading Challenge post. You won't be sailing away with them, but you'll be entering worlds where government rule strives to put things in "perfect" order.

Hope you've found something to pique your interest today! Let me know if you've read any of these books, and if you have any suggestions for other sci-fi we should try!

Happy reading... Suzanne